Anniversary
by Sylvr
Summary: She visits once a year, and always leaves the same gift. Drabble. Could be read as a romance, but more of a friendship fic.


A N N I V E R S A R Y

_The brilliance of his mind was matched only by the brilliance of his soul._

He was buried at a bend in a river at the base of an ancient oak, as per his request in his will. The tree stood alone in the middle of an open field, which rolled gently with emerald hills. The only humans that ever came to the grave were the four remaining members of the Fowl family and their accompanying Butlers, once a year. The family had bought the land and set it aside, never to be used for anything but the final resting place of Artemis Fowl II.

He was peaceful in death as he had never been in life.

Once a year, same as the Fowls did, Holly Short visited his grave. She came at night, on the anniversary of his death, following his family's daytime visit. Sometimes it was a full moon, and she took one of Artemis' acorns, and sometimes it was not, so she planted one she had retrieved earlier.

She always felt that she got more magic from the acorns she took from Artemis' tree.

After she was done with her acorns, she sat cross-legged atop his grave, leaning against his sixty-centimeter headstone, shaped in the traditional rectangle topped by a half circle. She talked to him, until just before dawn, usually. She told him about her year, about his friends underground, about the People. They made him a monument, she told him, just outside Police Plaza. He was generally regarded as a hero to the People, except for the anti-human faction, who regarded him as one might an unusually intelligent dog. She laughed after she told him, imagining his expression. Sometimes she fell silent, tracing the inscription with her small fingers, one with a perfectly circular scar around it's base. She'd teased him about the inscription once, which read:

_Artemis Fowl II_

_The brilliance of his mind was matched_

_only by the brilliance of his soul._

It was cheesy as could be, but nonetheless true. Angeline had had it written. The date below it measured only twenty years, and Artemis had lived only seventeen. He'd fallen into an unexpected coma, and died four days later. Magic had been unable to revive him. Holly had tried, desperately. No1 had tried as well, with similar results. The doctor in charge of his case--a specialist, the best in the world, and no where near as smart as his patient--had said something stupid about how Artemis was so bright that he had simply burned himself out. He had been buried in three days, with a quiet, emotional service. Holly had attended, shielded, and Foaly, Mulch, and a couple others had watched, underground. The Council held a massive, public, commemorative ceremony a month later, when they unveiled his statue. It depicted him standing sideways, head facing forwards, with a vaguely heroic version of his vampire smile on his determined face. The expression had been recreated from one of Foaly's video clips. From his outstretched hand blue plasma sparked, looking like a magical explosion from his fingertips. In his left hand, extended behind him, was a copy of the Book, cast in gold. He wore a suit, as he had in real life, and around his neck hung a recreation of the coin Holly had shot. It stood over two meters tall--taller than he had been in real life.

Holly almost always laughed when she saw it, imagining Artemis' skeptically arched brows and vaguely disapproving expression. He'd never liked the spotlight. It made it harder to engage in illicit activities.

She really missed him.

The sky was growing light. She left her gift--same thing every year--and flew back to her shuttle.

Myles was the one to discover that Artemis had a secret visitor. He'd dropped his cell phone while he and his brother were making their visit for the twentieth year (Angeline and Artemis I had died two years before) and come back the next day to retrieve it. He approached the grave quietly, out of respect for his brother, but stopped short when he spotted, placed neatly on the ground, a large, unwrapped rainbow lollipop. He went to pick it up, but something in him told him to leave it. Shrugging, he walked around, looking for his cell. Then he noticed the second odd thing: there was an inscription on the back of the headstone. It wasn't in English, or in any other language he recognized, and was just as weathered as the inscription on the front. He inspected it thoroughly, snapped a picture with his newly discovered phone, and left to tell his brother.

Holly Short could have told him that the inscription was in gnomish.

She could also have told him what it said, given that she was the one who carved it.

_You were a good boy, Arty._

**A/N: AF's not mine. It just occurred to me that Artemis eventually does become a good boy, but Holly never gives him his lolly. **


End file.
